But the anxieties of house-building were soon to place all others in the background, for a suitable plot was finally found in Bendler Street, (which at that time was sparsely built up,) and was bought on favorable conditions. The space at their disposal was large enough to permit of laying out an extensive garden, beside the roomy house.
At the laying of the corner stone, on the eighteenth of October, 1854, Lepsius made an admirable speech, from which we shall give some extracts later on. This was of course the occasion of a festal celebration, and friend Abeken composed the following sonnet for it:
“Within the ground all life doth first have birth,
Richly the tree unfolds its leafy pride,
Yet in the earth’s dark night its germ must hide,
And downward still the root strikes into earth.
And that this house may reach its highest worth,
The master now, with wisdom for his guide,
In the firm soil lays the foundations wide,
That he may bind it firmly with the earth.
Yet is there one firm ground where build we must,
On which our house’s peace we gladly found,
That still its sacred hearth with joy be filled;
This is fixed faith in God and happy trust,
With which forever love and hope are bound,
And thus a temple with the house we build.”
Lepsius had intentionally caused the corner stone to be laid where the living room of the mistress of the house was afterwards to be raised, and in his dedicatory speech he explained his motives for this in beautiful words. The house when finished had a fine and stately appearance, with its Gothic arches over doors and windows, its battlements on tower and roof, its handsome entrance, its covered piazza on the ground floor, and open balcony on the upper story, and its inscriptions in carved stone.
When it was ready for habitation, Abeken, the former divine, added the following second sonnet to the first:
That here the temple with the house should blend
On the foundation stone we wrote, and lo!
Sank it far underfoot, that even so
The darkling earth its strength to us might lend.
Yet must from Heaven the mighty power descend
That upward bids the earthly germ to grow,
And Life and Love must still from Heaven flow,
The sacred fire on the hearth to tend.